Apparently, a lawyer somewhere in Egypt filed a complaint with a prosecutor accusing the Egyptian political satirist, Bassem Youssef, with “insulting the President.” I had previously used the fact that Bassem Youssef’s show is even on the air as evidence that Egypt today cannot reasonably be considered a dictatorship, or at a minimum, that it is substantially more free, at least with respect to political expression, than it was in the Mubarak-era.  My friend then used this as a “classic gotcha moment”  This was what I said to my dear friend (meant seriously) in reply:

On December 8, 2012, the Ottawa Chapter of the Egyptian Dostour (Constitution) Party organized a roundtable at Carleton University.  Paul Sedra, May Telmessany, and I were the featured speakers, followed by a robust discussion with the public.  Links to the event are below:

part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOTZ2Ip67io
part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jOO_-7rtQ8&feature=youtu.be
part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewYQXqjoMS8
part 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28JcnDsfAHg
part 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvxt1i3vR-k
part 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIbPmFtjoWw

Many thanks to the event’s organizers, Ahmed Doha, Mina Riad and Reem el Sharif, for the excellent work they did in putting this event together.

 This is the third and last installment of my detailed responses to Khaled Fahmy’s “32 Reasons to Vote No” on the Draft Constitution.  Here is Part I and here is Part II.  Here is a link to my general observation on his objections to the constitution.

This is the second in my series of postings in response to Professor Khaled Fahmy’s “32 Reasons to Vote No” on the draft constitution.

A few days ago, I posted some general observations about Professor Khaled Fahmy’s “32 Reasons to Vote No” to the draft constitution.  In what follows, I will give detailed reactions to his first seven points. I hope to get to the remaining points over the next few days, if the country has not gone to hell by that time.

My friend and colleague at the American University in Cairo has published on his Facebook page a note in which he provides 32 reasons to vote no for the current constitution.  I have a few general comments to Khaled’s excellent discussion below:

Egyptians are on the verge of civil war because they cannot seem to agree on the text of a constitution.  For the most part, the disagreements that threaten to tear the country apart center around rights, more specifically, the role of religion in the modern Egyptian state.  This debate essentially finds most traction in two contexts, gender rights, and freedom of religion. 

The preamble to the United States Constitution reads as follows:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

A few days ago, I tweeted that Egypt was in a Hobbesian moment, not a Rawlsian one, and that Egypt’s draft constitution ought to be evaluated in light of that fact. 

Does Islamic law have a conception of sovereign immunity? Yes, and it is derived from the notion of the public official as a public agent.  This relationship defines both why it is obligatory to obey lawful acts of a public agent.– because one is always bound by the lawful acts taken by one’s own agent — and why one is not bound by the ruler’s unlawful acts — because an agent’s unlawful acts are beyond the scope of his agency and are thus that of a private person and not of an agent.